Multivitamins are useless, finds study of nearly 400,000 participants

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If you’re looking for ways to trim your budget, you might consider cutting multivitamins from your shopping list.

A large study recently published in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal by the American Medical Association, found that daily multivitamin use does not improve your long term health outlook.

The study found no significant association between multivitamin use and reduced mortality risk.

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In fact, the researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that the risk of death was four per cent higher among daily multivitamin users, compared with non-users.

The study used data from three large U.S. cohort studies, encompassing over 390,000 participants and 164,000 deaths during followup periods ranging up to 27 years.

The robust study accounted for various factors like lifestyle, demographics and health conditions.

“We did not find evidence to support improved longevity among healthy adults who regularly take multivitamins,” researchers concluded. They added, however, that daily multivitamin use “may be associated with other health outcomes related to aging.”

The findings build off previous studies that have also found little evidence to support the purported benefits of multivitamins, including brain and heart function.

The study participants were generally healthy, with no history of cancer or other chronic diseases. Researchers also found that the participants, in addition to taking multivitamins, tended to eat healthy diets, get adequate amounts of exercise and avoid smoking, all measures that can markedly improve long term health outlooks.

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Multivitamins can also pose a risk of interfering with other medications, like blood thinners and heart medications. Other studies have found that getting your vitamins from natural food sources, rather than supplements, is more beneficial for health.

In an additional commentary on the study, Neal Barnard, of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and colleagues, wrote that “refocusing nutrition interventions on food, rather than supplements, may provide the mortality benefits that multivitamins cannot deliver.”

They added that vegetables, fruits, legumes and cereal grains are staples in areas known for remarkable longevity, including Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; the island of Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.

“There is little health rationale for the use of multivitamin supplements,” they wrote. “Micronutrients come most healthfully from food sources. When supplementation is required, it can often be limited to the micronutrients in question.”

As for the slight uptick in mortality risk among daily multivitamin users, researchers suggest it could be due to older adults with health issues being more inclined to use these supplements.

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